Heavy-haul corridor bill on Texas’ Senate agenda passes

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A bill that would allow heavier tractor- trailers to travel along designated routes within a 30-mile radius of all international ports and bridges in Texas was filed to the Senate by Transportation Committee Chairman Robert Nichols and passed. Senate Bill 1524 allows manufacturers to maximize the payloads of containers being shipped internationally by matching tractor-trailer container weight limits to the limits enforced on those same containers at the port.

Port Houston, which currently handles 2 million containers per year, is anticipating it will handle 3 million containers per year by 2019 -- a 150-percent increase. Eighty to 90 percent of that growth is projected to come from the production of polyethylene alone. Polyethylene is, by and large, shipped overseas and will represent an additional 900 tractor-trailers on the road Monday-Friday carrying polyethylene pellets, according to Hector Rivero, president of the Texas Chemical Council.

Fracking has unlocked decades' worth of cheap natural gas, from which resin or polyethylene pellets are created, causing a global repositioning within the upstream oil and gas industry, explained Chad Burke, president and CEO of Economic Alliance Houston Port Region. This has made it "more advantageous for them to produce their products here than anywhere else in the world. The Houston Ship Channel has seen over $50 billion in expansion projects directly related to the price and availability of natural gas," he said.

While his industry partners and residential partners are very much split on the idea of a heavy-haul corridor, Burke said the alliance's partners are working in "lock step" to complete 27 agreed-upon and prioritized infrastructure projects.

"One thing that makes our area unique [to other port cities] is that our residences are all mixed in with the power plants," Morgan's Point Mayor Michel Bechtel said.

Rivero is worried about a different aspect of Port Houston's uniqueness. "Every other major port in the country has a permit to allow these fully loaded containers to get from manufacturers to port," he said. "They are shipping air right now." A fully loaded 40-foot trailer can hold 18 pallets of polyethylene pellets, but due to the current 84,000-pound weight restriction, trailers can only be loaded with 17 pallets, putting them at about 95-percent capacity.

If a heavy-haul corridor isn't approved, "it's going to impact the competitiveness of these sites we are building out, and it certainly will negatively impact the attractiveness of new projects," Rivero said.

"We're sending containers to Brazil and China at 80-percent capacity," said Jonathan Sierra-Ortega, policy director for the Senate Transportation Committee.

The bill increases weight limits from 84,000 pounds on a five-axle truck to 93,000 pounds on a six-axle truck and 100,000 pounds on a seven-axle truck. The additional axles would better distribute the weight on surface roads and would be accompanied by additional braking mechanisms. Bridge weight limitations are based on gross weight, and additional axles would not have the same mitigating effect.

Sierra-Ortega said the Transportation Committee understands the need to "stay competitive with other states" while still balancing safety concerns in port cities.

"We've been opposing it [a heavy-haul corridor] for about six years now," said Bechtel, who testified against a heavy-haul corridor bill in 2016. "It's come up every legislative session. It's been shot down by the Transportation Committee for a number of years."

Bechtel, who owns his own oil company, said, "We understand the problem. I just don't see that heavy haul is the solution. The port is the economic engine for not just Southeast Texas but all of Texas. Heavy haul is a very small part of that."

Bechtel hopes the industry will seek out safer, more "long-term solutions," such as a freight shuttle being developed by Texas A&M University or a railroad tunnel under the Houston Ship Channel to move products from the northern manufacturing facilities to the southern ports in a much more direct route than is currently possible.